Drooling at Bells

Three Serial Miniatures for Flute and Guitar

Audio

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Score

Notes from the composer

Drooling at Bells was composed in the spring of 2004. The title is an arcane personal reference to an early piece I wrote called Pavlov’s Dog (the common element being the use of serial technique).

At the time that I wrote these pieces, I was writing a number of “compositional etudes” to explore various aspects of serial techniques, especially focusing on ways to relate pitch material to rhythmic material and modes of closure in non-tonal spaces. I wrote one or two a week for two months. I then choose the three most successful for this piece.

The first piece doesn’t serialize the rhythmic element. It is independent of the tone-row.

The second piece uses the time-point method to relate the tone-row to rhythm.

The third piece uses a duration row that is derived from the tone-row.

Performance History

July 3 2006 – Reading session
Antares Boyle, flute.
Ben Cantu, guitar.